Speak No Evil
Sep 29th, 2005 at 9:26 am by Susie
Good piece from Juan Cole:
The frankly pusillanimous tactic of declining to speak out on the war will ill serve the Democratic Party, which has managed to lose both houses of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. The American public is not generally antiwar, it is simply impatient with any long-term, highly expensive governmental endeavor that does not appear likely to succeed. Especially in the wake of the natural disasters in the Gulf of Mexico in August and September, the idea of spending over $1 billion a week in Iraq is increasingly distasteful to them. Even Bush’s Republican base is beginning to have second thoughts about the Iraq misadventure. It is increasingly clear that Islam and Muslim clerics will have an unprecedentedly powerful role in the new Iraq, that Assyrian and Chaldean Christians are under much worse pressure than before the war, that the position of women is being undermined, and that the country is simply not going to be the missionary field of which the evangelical Christians had dreamed. None of this news strikes Bush’s Christian supporters as good.
The potential of a strong antiwar stance striking a chord with the public has already been demonstrated by Paul Hackett. A Marine who recently served in Iraq, Hackett became a civilian and ran in August as a Democrat for Congress in Ohio’s 2nd District, traditionally heavily Republican. He lambasted George W. Bush as a chicken hawk and said he should never have begun the Iraq war. Yet Hackett is no peacenik. He says, “I love the Marine Corps. I happen to think it’s being misused in Iraq.” He only narrowly lost the election, and the Democratic leadership is seriously thinking of putting him up for an Ohio Senate seat, according to the Hill.
Even Democrats who are not veterans of Iraq need to find the courage to speak out on the war if they are effectively to challenge the Republicans. Simply waiting around for things to get worse in Baghdad is a dangerous strategy, not so much because the situation is likely to improve any time soon but because the American people want real leadership on this issue and they know they are not getting it from Bush.
Susie, I love your blog. Its interesting and mercifully succinct.
Too many of the Dems signed the blank check. That’s one reason I think the 2008 candidate will have to come from outside DC. A governor like VA’s Mark Warner.
Just guessing.
Jeff
Even if the dem’s start to say what we want to hear. Will they do what needs to be done?
Hackett didn’t lose his election to congress — it was just more vote tabulation fraud. The Dems have to speak out about voting reform, not just about Iraq. Without changes, they’ll never win anything else again.
Said much better than I.
http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/messaging.html
Also the beginning of his article is quite good.
“But they have other options than silence. They could point out that they were misled by the Bush administration, which menaced them with visions of mushroom clouds from Iraqi nukes, visions that now seem likely to have been outright lies”
For them to admit that they were lied to, would then logically lead them to have to investigate the liars. they have no power, nor probably stomach for that. When people complain that it’s hard to tell the parties apart, this is what I think of. Neither serves the people, only the money, business likes GW idiot.
The true test will come next year, when, and if they take back either house of congress.